


Personal Symbol

by sister_coyote



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - Manga, F/F, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-01
Updated: 2008-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:06:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everything is important, and yet everything <i>is</i> important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Symbol

It's Hawkeye's great-grandfather's rifle that first gets Winry's attention. It's a beautiful old thing; one of the first models made with a stainless-steel rather than carbon-steel barrel, to reduce inaccuracy due to wear and heat-warping. The stock is polished wood (Winry couldn't say what kind; metal is her passion) with a falcon etched on it. Hawk-Eye. Hawkeye.

"It doesn't work," Hawkeye says, seeing her looking at it, "but it's a beautiful piece, isn't it? My father's family had an estate, long ago, and the rifle was used for sport hunting." It makes sense. Most of the old landed families have lost their land and their wealth, this is a different economy, but there is something of the faded aristocrat to the Lieutenant, for all that she works as hard as Winry for her living.

Winry licks her lips. She intends to agree that it's a beautiful antique, because it is, but what comes out of her mouth—of course—is, "What's wrong with it?"

Without a word, Hawkeye reaches for the rifle, takes it from its hooks, and lays it in Winry's hands.

* * *

It was simple compassion that lead Hawkeye to offer her apartment, her fold-out couch, to Miss Rockbell when she arrived in town a scant day after the Elric brothers had left—and had stood covering her frustration and worry with anger, stomping, in the office, and cursing them: _came all the way from Rush Valley, they could be a little bit accommodating, it's not like I don't have anything else to do—!_ And Winry had been all set to take off that same night (had said, ash-faced, that she couldn't possibly impose on Mrs. Hughes again, not now), which was foolish; she'd come such a long way, such a tiring trip, she ought to at least get a good meal and a good night's sleep before getting on the train back, and if she wouldn't ask Mrs. Hughes, then Riza would put her up herself.

She'd thought nothing of it at the time (it was, after all, why she had purchased a sofa that folded out), but now she thinks of it, because it is a peculiar thing, a slightly alien thing, to have someone sitting bent over her coffee table—and especially that that someone is not a co-worker, is not Havoc getting smoke into her carpet or Breda drinking coffee and spreading out the chessboard or Fuery on the floor with Hayate. She'd observed before that Winry has grown into a very pretty young woman, but what she is realizing now is that she's also grown into a very smart young woman. Her fair head bends over a pile of rifle parts, her eyes fix on bits of metal, bits of wood, and it is almost certainly the truth that Winry gets too little credit, her own peculiar brilliance in the shadow of the more flamboyant genius of the Elric brothers, of Edward particularly.

"You've been keeping them clean," Winry says, her voice soft and no longer deferential, no longer well-bred-country-girl polite, "but there's some corrosion, and the parts are out of balance. Do you have any sandpaper?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Steel wool?"

Riza gets up and retrieves the bit she uses to scrub stubborn stains from the bottom of her cast-iron, and Winry goes after the corrosion with a vengeance, lower lip caught between her teeth. And Riza remembers hearing that this girl, this pretty young woman, had been doing automail surgery when she was eleven.

* * *

Winry can always lose herself in a piece of work, but as she reaches the end—carefully oiling the rifle parts again, handling the carved stock not with her bare dirty hands but with a piece of cloth, reassembling the parts one at a time so that they clicked into place, oiled and perfect—she becomes slowly aware of Hawkeye's gaze on her, faintly appraising.

"There," she says, holding it out. "Good as new."

Hawkeye hefts the gun to her shoulder and sights along it with a practiced ease that is, honestly, terrifying to Winry. She likes mechanical parts and she even likes weaponry—she is learning to fit self-defense tools into automail, like that in Paninya's leg—but she still cannot shake her fear of soldiers, for all that Hawkeye is smiling at her as she lowers the gun, looks appreciative and grateful. It sends a chill down her spine. She wishes she could say she didn't like it.

"I haven't any bullets for it," Hawkeye says, "but I'll put it through its paces at the firing range on Monday. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Winry says. Her stomach is tight, her hands feel light and itchy without something in them. She feels hot, cold, restless. "Is the carving a family symbol?"

"Yes," Hawkeye says. "Part of the old family crest. There used to be stag's horns and a motto, but those were dropped long ago, and then it was only the falcon, and then that dropped too. Now it's just the name. And me."

"You're the last?"

"The last Hawkeye, yes." Her smile went distant. "To my father's credit he never wanted a boy to carry on the family name. He had another legacy that was more important to him."

Winry reaches out again to take the rifle, to look at the falcon emblazoned on the polished wood. Her fingers nearly touch Riza's—Hawkeye's?—and suddenly she knew what she was going to do, foolish or not.

Winry was never one for long speeches. She proves she cares by adjusting automail, or baking a pie, or chucking a wrench at your head. So when Lieutenant Hawkeye—Riza! Riza Riza Riza—leans forward to examine the rifle with her, she catches her breath, squares her shoulders, and closes the distance between them to kiss her. It is an awkward kiss at a very weird angle, and she gets a mouthful of Riza's loose hair but she is too afraid that if she backs off she will lose her nerve, so she pushes all the way forward until her lips meet Riza's, a strand of blonde hair trapped between their lips. Riza goes very still, and for a long terrified moment she prolongs the kiss out of sheer desperation—when she stops she'll have to think of something to _say_, and the thought is mortifying—but then, very slowly, Riza's hand comes up; she backs off just long enough to brush the strand of hair out of the way, and then cups Winry's cheek and tips her head and turns it into a real kiss.

* * *

Winry kisses without expertise but also without clumsiness; it's not her first kiss, and Riza is deeply grateful to discover that. She is so pretty and so _young_ but also so clever, and it is not much more fair to treat her like a normal seventeen-year-old than it would be to treat Edward like that. Winry has felt real grief, has made a profession of her own in which she is both skillful and successful, has built a small and tenuous but very genuine family. How many adults can stay that.

Still, when Winry's fingers reach, shaking, for the button at Riza's throat, Riza covers them and says, "Winry."

"It's not my first time," Winry says, excited and impatient and also, perhaps, nervous. Perhaps wondering if she will be stopped. "I've done this before, I mean, my friend in Rush Valley, Paninya—"

And that's another thing again. Carefully, Riza says, "I don't want to be the reason for you to break faith with a friend."

Winry blinks fast, as though confused; perhaps she is, she is flushed, she is so young and Riza remembers what kisses felt like at that age—however mature she is she is still young—"Oh, no, it's not like that, it's not exclusive, it's not, we're not, we don't have a, a, a _romance_, we just wanted to see . . ."

Riza remembers that as well, remembers vividly the first experimental fumblings: do you feel what I feel, do you want what I want, can we really, what would happen . . . ? Trying and finding out, figuring it out together and apart, a close-held secret—but still a friendship, fundamentally, not a romantic entanglement. Not a relationship in the Relationship sense.

As this most likely is, and will be: a friendship leavened with pleasure but in its nature fundamentally unchanged. They are not alchemists, turning the nature of things casually over at every pass; they take what is and hone it to a fine purpose, but leave it in essence what it is, nothing less. Perhaps Winry will come again to Central, and they will kiss secretly beneath the deep shadows of the train station. Or perhaps Winry will come again and they will share coffee and nothing more. Or perhaps she will not come again, but will stay in Rush valley as she has threatened, and will make the Elrics come to her. Riza finds she is not disappointed to contemplate any of those futures, for either of them.

But she is ahead of herself; Winry is here, has not gone yet, is here, now, warm and eager, hesitant and unsure.

* * *

There are a few more murmured exchanges—are you sure, do you want this, know you can tell me to stop at any time—and Winry agrees, stumbles over herself to do so, would agree to anything as long as Riza keeps kissing her between each whispered question. She kisses very well, her mouth soft and dry as suede and then opening and her tongue not dry at all, slick hot electricity brushing tentatively against Winry's tongue, stroking lightly the roof of Winry's mouth. Winry has kissed like this before, but it's been hot and messy and clumsy, neither of them knowing what they're doing, laughing and breaking the kiss. This is different, and Winry thinks, _Oh_, and then thinks, _practice_. All things come more easily with practice.

Still, she is the one to tug backward, awkwardly encouraging Hawkeye (Riza, Riza) back onto the couch with her, undoing buttons again. She feels like she could have sex through her mouth alone, the sensation is that new and that intense, Riza's hand gentle in her hair. She thinks then to reach up and work her own fingers into Riza's hair, scratching the back of her neck and shivering a little with surprise when that earns a moan.

She feels like she could have sex through her mouth alone: but she is greedy, and wants more. She curses herself for having dressed up for Central, shed her usual tube top and loose coveralls—but Riza does not seem perturbed by the dress, slips off the shoulder-straps and strokes her with slim fingers, callused palms against her breasts. Her dress collapses a little, and with a little arch and wiggle she convinces it to come off entirely and then wonders if she has gone too far; but there is no time to worry, she is still being kissed, and fingers find their way into her underwear tentatively, giving her time to protest. Protest what?

It takes not much at all; Riza wets her fingers at Winry's entrance but then slides up to pay attention to her clitoris only, touching as gently but firmly, with the same light expert pressure, the same wet static sparking that has been going off against Winry's mouth, and within minutes Winry is tensing, clutching at Riza's open shirt and crying out, and embarrassed to have finished so quickly.

But Riza's eyes are warm and satisfied. Winry manages to unclench her cramp-knotted hands from Riza's shirt and says, "I'm sorry—"

But Riza says, "Nothing to be sorry about," and takes her hand, and moves it beneath the waistband of her own pants.

* * *

Afterward they go to bed together; it would be cold to fold out the couch, and Riza does not want to at any rate. Wants warmth in her bed, a head against her shoulder, soft breaths. She closes her eyes, thinks of Winry in Rush Valley, shouting threats at her customers and wrench in hand, and smiles to herself.


End file.
